


my face had said too much

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Happy Birthday Adam Parrish, M/M, POV Outsider, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 08:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15139265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: "WHAT, WHAT IS THIS, WHAT'S WITH THE KISSING?"





	my face had said too much

**Author's Note:**

> Anon on tumblr wanted fic of the first time that everyone sees Ronan and Adam kiss each other, and that was _exactly_ the kind of fluff that I wanted to write for Adam's birthday. Hope you like the fic, anon!

Adam has just enough time to open his eyes and step away before Blue smacks Ronan on the shoulder.

"WHAT?" she demands. "WHAT, WHAT IS THIS, WHAT'S WITH THE KISSING?"

Adam winces. He hadn't really thought it through, he'd just -- wanted to kiss Ronan, and so he had. He hadn't thought the fact that they were in front of their friends, that this -- whatever it was between them, was new, and fragile, and shy.

Ronan scowls at Blue and squares his shoulders, like he's daring her to smack him again, which she does. "You had your chance, death lips."

Okay, scratch that, maybe _fragile_ and _shy_ aren't the right words.

"THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT AT ALL AND YOU KNOW IT."

"I don't know anything," Ronan says, "don't tell me what I know."

"OH MY GOD, YOU'RE THE WORST. NEXT TIME A DEMON TRIES TO DESTROY YOU I'M JUST GOING TO LET IT DO IT." 

"Psh, like you did anything."

Adam glances uneasily at Gansey, who is looking about as shell-shocked as Adam feels. "Should we intervene?"

"I think perhaps they need to settle this themselves."

"Chicken."

"Prudent," Gansey corrects him.

"OBVIOUSLY HE IS YOURS NOW," Blue is saying when Adam gets up the nerve to tune back in, "NO SANE PERSON WOULD LET YOU TOUCH THEM, THAT'S NOT THE POINT."

"You had a point?"

"WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN! WAS NO ONE GOING TO TELL ME?"

Adam winces again. "I'm not really a fan of being talked about like I'm not here."

"Well, I can't control her." Gansey's words are exasperated, but there's a goofy lovestruck smile on his face that Adam is very much afraid he has his own version of.

"I figured Parrish would have brought it up," Ronan says, and now Blue is glaring at Adam.

"I think I liked it better when they were pretending I wasn't here," he says, and Gansey pats his back, camaraderie for a brother-in-arms going into battle.

-

Matthew's had two or four or a dozen tutors over the years, patient and nice and smart and always telling him things that he mostly remembers eventually. One of them had said that it was important to reward yourself when you did your work. Matthew remembers _that_ lesson just fine, so when he finishes the first problem in his math set he wanders out to the kitchen to get a snack.

Ronan is standing next to the counter, although when Matthew says "hey, Ronan," he jerks back away from it like he's been electrocuted. Oh, his friend Parrish was standing right in front of him. Actually, he had his hands in Ronan's back pockets, huh. Weird. "Hey, Parrish." He opens the freezer, hoping for ice cream, but sighs: it's empty.

"Don't you have homework?" Ronan demands.

"I'm doing it," Matthew wheedles. "I just need a snack."

"Have some celery."

Matthew sighs again and trudges back to his bedroom.

Halfway there he stops, realization hitting him as he thinks back to the kitchen: Ronan, Parrish, the counter -- _wait a minute_ \-- 

"The cookie jar," he says, and dashes back to the kitchen. Ronan and his friend are already gone, so there's no one to see him take _two_ cookies back to his room.

-

"Whaaaa -- " Henry gasps, as theatrically as only he can.

"Oh, for the love of God," Parrish mutters, turning his face slightly so he's speaking into Lynch's cheek.

"When did this romance bloom?"

"I _know_ , right?" Blue says, very nearly as theatrically as Henry himself. Blue is possessed of every wonderful trait.

"I'm not sitting through this a second time." Parrish tugs at Lynch's hand.

Lynch drops it.

Parrish frowns at him; he shrugs.

"Why, Lynch," Henry purrs, "could it be that you wish to gossip with us about your boyfriend?"

Lynch smirks, _very_ satisfied with himself.

"Jesus Christ," Parrish says, and flees.

-

"Oh," Orla sighs as, outside the window, Ronan kisses Adam and Adam shoves him off, playful. "This is the third time this has happened to me."

"Ronan being gay is not something that is _happening_ to you," Blue snaps. "It's not about you at all."

"A girl could get a complex."

"Oh, _please, get_ a complex."

"It's a good thing I have so much self-esteem."

"NO IT ISN'T."

-

Ronan and Adam have been sitting on the couch so long that it's gotten dark in the living room.

They aren't dreaming, which would give Opal something to do, and they aren't arguing, which is interesting too, and they aren't Wasting Your Time On Calculus Parrish or Working Out Again Lynch Don't You Know Vanity Is A Sin, which are both activities that provide Opal with opportunities to interrupt and interfere. They're just -- mushing their faces together, in a way that looks uncomfortable and sounds even worse.

She puts the palm of her hand over her mouth, just to be sure. It fails to be interesting for even a moment, let alone _hours_.

She runs her hand down her face, so that her lip curls, runs the wet pink skin inside of it over her fingers. "Gross."

Too loud, but she doesn't even mind because they stop smashing their gross mouths together. Ronan glares at her, which is interesting again, and Parrish puts his hand over his mouth, just like Opal had been doing a second before.

"How long have you been standing there?" Ronan demands.

"For _ev_ er," Opal says.

"Like father, like daughter," Adam mutters, and Ronan glares at him, too.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Your dream thing is very sarcastic and very intense and very, very unnerving."

"Quit flattering her, she's enough of a brat already."

Opal sticks her own wet slimy tongue out at him and flicks on the lights, gallops out of the room while Ronan and Adam shade their eyes and complain about the brightness.

-

They don't have a funeral.

How could they? They don't have a _body_. And Declan, at least, had said goodbye to his mother a long time ago. But his brothers hadn't, and they need something, so he hires an engraver to add her name to their father's headstone, along with a date of birth that's a lie and a date of death that's true and all too recent.

They have a memorial of sorts, the three of them standing at the graveside, and if Declan's worried about what Ronan will do in his grief the worry seems at first unfounded: Ronan stands and glowers, and Matthew stands and cries, and so Declan lets himself bow his head and stop swallowing down his own strange sorrow.

When he looks up, sometime later, Matthew is no longer crying, and Ronan is no longer there.

"Come on," Declan says, "let's get to the car. I'll buy you a coffee," and Matthew goes, so that just leaves Ronan.

Declan steps into St. Agnes on silent feet. He figures Ronan might have gone to pray, or light a candle.

Ronan is nowhere to be seen.

Frowning, he walks faster, back out the side of the building, but his car's still there, Matthew buckling into the back seat, so if Ronan did sneak off somewhere to make trouble he went on foot.

Declan walks around the back of the church, starting to seethe, when he hears Ronan's voice.

" -- just -- fuck it all."

"I know," and that's Parrish's voice; Declan forgot he lived here, unforgivable oversight even under the circumstances. "I know."

He steps around to the foot of the stairs up to the second floor apartment, looks up --

\-- and sees Parrish and Ronan sitting on the top step, foreheads pressed together. Parrish brushes a thumb over Ronan's cheekbone, over the tear that's rolling down there, and lowers his hand to cup Ronan's face.

"I know," he says, low, and Ronan tilts his face in Parrish's hands to bring their lips together.

Declan walks off as soundless as he'd approached.

"Where's Ronan?" Matthew asks, when he gets into the driver's seat.

"Don't know," Declan lies. "We'll give him a minute."

-

Ugh. Teenagers. Calla isn't sure what she'd done to deserve a life surrounded by _teenagers_ , especially given that she never had any children herself. Bad enough that Blue had killed her true love and now had nothing to fear from romance; but wherever you got one teenager, you got more of them, and wherever you got more than one teenager, you got kissing.

And never mind tiny concerns like _timing_ , such as when someone is waiting for you, or _location_ , like if you're around the side of someone else's house -- teenagers will still go for it, and here's two of Blue's raven boys to prove it.

Calla's carrying a toolbox, and she lets it drop to the ground. It makes a satisfactory _thud_ , and even better, the boys separate, Coca Cola shirt skittering away like a horse that's spotted a snake in the grass.

She raises an eyebrow at him. "The madwoman's looking for you."

"Sorry," he says, and goes off around to the front of the house with all of the excitement and speed you'd expect from someone who has to go see Gwenllian.

Calla isn't anyone's mother, and she's suffered enough teenage idiocy to last a lifetime, but -- Coca Cola shirt had been important to Persephone, so now he's important to her. Sometimes, at odd moments, she spots something in the corner of his eyes that looks familiar.

So she glares at Blue's other boy, the one that's more raven than boy, though these days you can see bits and pieces of skin showing through his plumage.

"Don't do anything stupid," she warns him.

"Wasn't gonna," he says, half sullen, half serious, and she leaves him outside, ruffling his feathers.

-

It's too many people crammed into one house, noise and laughter and the constant itching feeling that someone could be sneaking up behind him. Ronan tolerates it for as long as he can, which is about five minutes, and then he distracts himself wondering how the hell Blue and Gansey even _got_ all of these people in one place -- Declan's across the room talking to Blue's most terrifying witch-aunt, which can't possibly mean anything good for Ronan's life.

He'd really like to just sneak out, but -- it's a party for _Adam_. Ronan isn't going to ruin that.

Except where the hell is Adam, anyway?

He pushes his way through the weird sprawling layout of 300 Fox Way, which always feels like it was designed specifically so someone could trap him into a conversation in some little hideaway corner that he can't get out of. Blue's cousin is out back setting firecrackers off a day early, so she can't try to trick him into Girl Talk, thank fuck, but there's still too many people, and none of them are Adam.

He steps out the front door, breathes deep and shuts his eyes, and when he opens them again, there's Adam, sitting on the porch railing with his knees up watching the sunset.

"It's a faux pas for the guest of honor to ditch his own party."

"I'll go back in," Adam says. "I just needed a minute. It's -- a lot."

"You didn't have to let Sargent take over your birthday. Just because she wants to party before she leaves town -- "

"I don't mind. It's nice of her. It's just -- " Adam trails off.

Ronan says it for him. "A lot."

"Yeah."

There's not really enough room beside Adam to jump up on the railing, but Ronan puts an arm over his shoulders.

Adam looks at him out of the corner of his eye, only visible out of the corner of Ronan's eye, but he can tell the expression, puzzled, amused, even before Adam speaks.

"Did I look cold?"

Ronan nuzzles at his neck. "No."

Adam leans in against him, weight shifting enough that if Ronan stepped away from the railing, he'd fall off it.

Ronan steps closer.

From inside the house he can just make out Declan asking, "where did Parrish get to, anyway?"

"Outside," Cheng answers, "I think your brother is with him."

"I could get them!" Matthew pipes up.

"Oh, leave it," Blue says, "you know how sappy they get."

Adam exhales sharply. "Looks like word got out about us."

Ronan rests his lips on Adam's jaw. "Good," and Adam turns to claim him with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic you can [reblog it on tumblr.](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/175511480175/my-face-had-said-too-much-shinealightonme)


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